Masisi’s cabinet performance contracts will deliver nothing

Adam Phetlhe

On face value, the approach by President M.E.K. Masisi to sign Strategic Agreements with members of his cabinet should be a welcome development to significantly deliver quality services to Batswana. It is fair to say it is important such agreements are made public so that we know what the key deliverables are and to determine whether or not Ministers would have complied.  Cabinet members had no choice but to accept what the President is bringing forward lest they jeopardise their chances of further enjoying the trappings of their positions. But in their hearts of hearts, some of them will readily admit that they did not deserve to the appointed to those positions in the first place except that their biggest trump card was that of being the President’s blind loyalists. In fact, the President has at some point demanded unconditional loyalty from his cabinet. One does not have to go very far except to say with no fear of contradiction that the televised parliamentary proceedings have brutally exposed the quality or lack thereof of what we currently have. On the basis of how most of the cabinet ministers have pitifully displayed their inborn shortcomings in fumbling to answer questions and to make intellectual contributions to debates within and without parliament, it is my considered view they will fumble to meet and implement the objectives of the agreement whatever they are.

To be fair to cabinet members, some of them have as a matter of fact, been placed at the deep end because they do not deserve any positions in cabinet. That is, they cannot offer anything more than they have because they have not shown any slightest inkling that they possess leadership qualities to propel their ministries to where they ought to be. The President himself indicated soon after the 2019 general elections at an event in Francistown that he did not have confidence in some of them in terms of the gravitas to be in cabinet. This in some way evoked the conversation that it is perhaps time for cabinet members to be appointed from outside parliament.